Performances

Abstract

The Odin’s productions are now more diverse in terms of scale, form and style than previously. This continues to refute an early criticism that each performance and, by implication, Barba’s directorial choices, were each too similar to the previous. At the time, Barba stated in his defence in an interview that ‘if you use this criterion, then you no longer have to read more than one James Joyce or Dostoyevsky or look at more than one Cézanne’ (Barba, 1979, p. 27), going on to draw attention to how similar themes and modes of expression may be revisited throughout an artist’s output. Clearly, any company with an emphasis on training (even if, as Chapter 2 explores, training has shifted over the years), or which relies on improvisation, will inevitably create links between its creative process and performance results. This is true of the Odin’s contemporaries such as The Living Theatre, as well as Grotowski’s work, of course, as it is for the many contemporary companies who devise work. However, if Torgeir Wethal’s comments (Chapter 2) on the nature of the Ferai cast imply a direct link between the extremely demanding nature of training at the time and the austere, if admittedly brave and compelling extremis of that production, there is today perhaps more room to create performance styles that are not directly influenced by the physical demands of training, but rather its varying qualities.